


Rhodochrosite

by PoorWendy



Series: Inceptiversary 2016 - Trope Bingo [1]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Arthur and Mal, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mal-as-she-was, Moving On, Reincarnation, This is a happy story I swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-19 23:19:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7381546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoorWendy/pseuds/PoorWendy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But years went by, and after so many years, when you put one foot in front of the other enough times, you notice something: relief. Relief that your life doesn't revolve around loss anymore. And after nine years, <em>nine years</em> without Mal, Arthur is finally okay with that. Enough is enough.</p><p>Which is what makes <em>this</em> whole experience, meeting <em>her</em>, all-the-more difficult to ignore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rhodochrosite

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the Reincarnation trope for Inception Bingo. Big, huge thank you to [malfunctioningtotem](http://www.malfunctioningtotem.tumblr.com/) for translating some of my dialogue into French for me! Also, I flexed my html skills and managed some hover text so if you hover your mouse over the French phrases, you'll be able to see their English translations.

Once he stopped working with Dom, Arthur felt the agony of losing her all over again. And he kicked himself for it because, really it wasn't even  _her_ he was losing this time. It was just what Cobb's guilty conscience could pull together, but all the same, she'd  _been there_ with them for years while they'd run.

Arthur hated her—Dom's projection of Mal. It seemed like a certainty, but now and then he felt like that hate was only a lie he was telling himself. Because, no matter how thoroughly she  _fucked_ them each and every time she came traipsing out of the folds of Cobb's mind, whenever Arthur saw her standing there his stomach would still  _drop_.

"I mean... just  _look at her_ ," Cobb had said once, "she's so  _real_." And Arthur  _really_ hated him for that, because even though it wasn't true—even though she was so inarguably  _not_ real,  _not Mal_ —those words echoed in his mind every time he saw her.

And he started to believe it.

Eames tried, Arthur knew, to mend him. Eames, for how destructive Arthur always thought he would be at the beginning, is a fucking fixer. It's, well, infuriating. Then again, it's also the thing that made it possible for Arthur to build trust in Eames beyond any point he'd ever imagined.

But, at any rate, once Cobb went back home, once he was back with the kids, once he was out of the business, Arthur began a new kind of grief. It was hard-going. Eames helped.

Eames, who'd known Mal. Who'd loved Mal. Who'd barely ever been plagued with the half-version of her that Cobb had dreamed up. Eames, who  _loved_ Arthur, and helped him remember that he'd already done all this—he'd already lost her, already grieved her—that he wasn't losing anything this time, he was  _gaining something, darling, don't you see?_

It took years, really. It took a few rare, precious dreams of his own—Somnacin-free dreams where he saw her as she'd really been, how she laughed again, with him and at him, how she held him and murmured in soothing French that he was so beautiful, that he'd come so far, and that he had her every permission to let her go... to  _live_. It took trips to see Dom, to forgive Dom, to hold the children and dig through their  _Dom_ ness to find Mal's smile, and the way she wrinkled her nose.

And then one day, he woke up, and he was...  _fine_. He was happy. He saw his life as all that lay ahead of him, not all he'd lost—not the murky, painful memories he'd buried and unburied, and the ones that had crawled to the surface again unbidden.

It was nice... to be happy. Even if it was a bit difficult to adjust to at first, even if he felt the need to pull the sadness out of himself by force just because he was afraid of what  _really_ letting go could feel like.

But years went by, and after so many years, when you put one foot in front of the other enough times, you notice something: relief. Relief that your life doesn't revolve around loss anymore. And after  _nine years_ , nine years without Mal, Arthur is finally okay with that. Enough is enough.

Which is what makes  _this_ whole experience, meeting  _her_ , all-the-more difficult to ignore. Arthur doesn't need to pull meaning out of thin air anymore, doesn't feel the ache for catharsis. There's really no chance it's in his head.

They're in London, Arthur and Eames. They're celebrating nothing in particular besides the fact that it's been a while since Eames dragged Arthur to the UK to revel amongst his roots a little.

Arthur does like London. The song-and-dance they do of Eames pouting and pleading, and Arthur sighing and scoffing, is all habit these days. Arthur supposes he should be a little more upfront about the things he's warmed up to by now, but if he didn't put up just a  _bit_ of a fight, it just wouldn't be  _him_ —they wouldn't be  _them_.

So he managed to maintain the demeanor of one who has been severely inconvenienced all the way onto the plane. Once they were in the air, though, it was hard for Arthur to hide the excitement building in his belly, so he abandoned the effort completely.

And from that moment to this one, here, days later, in the Natural History Museum, he's had nothing to offer but Eames' favorite dimpled smiles. Because it's just beautiful, being here together.

Even if, at this particular moment, he's lost Eames entirely. He's not busy looking for him; Eames might resent that, having been quite clear about backtracking to a gift shop  _just a little ways back, darling, won't be gone a minute_. And all for, what was it? Astronaut ice cream? One of those extendable, grabbing dinosaur heads on a pole?

So, instead of tracking Eames down, he's wandered his way to "Earth's Treasury," a gallery  _glowing_ with display cases filled with minerals and gemstones and rocks, and he admires the glittering contents for a few minutes.

The museum  _has_ been slow for a summer day, perhaps since it's practically evening now, but still, he only notices he's been  _alone_ in the long gallery once he realizes he  _isn't_.

Beside him, on tip toes, peering into the same case that he is, stands a little girl. She doesn't seem to mind getting just-about in his way at all. "What's this one called?" she asks, from underneath a wild mess of long brown hair, nose pressed to the glass. She's pointing down at one of the minerals below.

"The red one?" Arthur asks. She nods. He refers to the information written above the case and finds the corresponding name. " _Rhodochrosite_ ," he says, taking some effort to sound as though he knows how to pronounce it, like she would care if she knew he'd just learned it as well, same as her.

She's wearing a blue dress, nearly too big hanging on her skinny shoulders; on her feet, a pair of red, clunky, lace-up boots. "I like it," she says, admiringly, and it's only now Arthur hears that she's French.

Arthur gives the Rhodochrosite a second look—red, craggy, less-than-opaque. "I like it too," he decides aloud.

She looks up at him finally, and looks ready to smile. "I have a little bit of quartz," she tells him, her voice a little lower, like it's a big secret.

"You  _do_?" he asks in slightly exaggerated surprise, not second-guessing indulging her for a moment. She nods again and fishes into her dress pocket. "You have it with you?"

" _Oui_ ," she lets slip, before correcting herself, "Yes." She pulls out her hand and opens it, the little purple rock resting in her palm.

" _Violet_ ," he says, and as the word pours of his mouth he startles softly at the long-since-used accent it's dripping with. She giggles and nods approvingly, pocketing the quartz again, and now she's digging for something else. "What," Arthur asks, "you just have a bunch of  _rocks_  in your pocket?"

She looks back up at him and sticks her tongue out. "Not just  _rocks_ ," she says with another giggle.

And she shows him a bolt, a marble, and a very thick eyeglass lens. " _Who_ did this belong to?" Arthur asks about the lens, laughing.

"My grandfather!" she answers. They end up sitting on the floor as she picks through her treasures, which also include what Arthur believes is a real pearl, four—no— _five_ buttons of varying size and color, and a shoelace.

"You have a lot of buttons," he points out, poking at the largest one, the red one. "Are they your favorite?"

She shakes her head. "No," she answers. "Just the easiest to find."

"Tu penses que je peux deviner lequel est ton préféré?" he asks her. She shakes her head again, tongue poking through holes in her smile where baby teeth used to be. "Non? Pourquoi pas?"

She squeezes one eye shut and scrunches up her nose briefly, looking like she's got  _inside information_ and she's not quite sure whether she ought to divulge it.  "C'est dans mon autre poche," she says quietly, letting him in on the secret.

He grins. "Ça doit être spécial," he observes. "Et tu gardes toujours tout ça avec toi?" he asks.

"Ouaip," she replies.

"Tu n'en perds jamais?" he asks.

"Jamais," she says. "Tu ne gardes rien avec toi?"

Arthur shrugs. "Mon portefeuille," he answers, pulling it out of his pocket and placing it next to her collection. She runs a fingertip across the leather. "Et mes clés, mon portable aussi," he offers, dumping it all, actually frowning at how mediocre his belongings look next to hers.

"Comme mon Papa," she says, slowly turning the wallet where it sits.

"Actually," he says, dropping the other language unthinkingly, "I do have something else." He realizes quickly and without hesitation that he  _does_ have something he carries at all times, something she'd probably love. "I can show it to you, but you can't hold it. Deal?"

She nods. "Okay," she agrees.

He pulls the loaded die—small, familiar, and warm—from his pocket. He's totally pleased with himself at the look in her eyes. He's surprised her.

"It's... pretty," she says quietly. "You always have it?"

"I do," he confirms.

She watches as he lets it roll around his palm, among his fingers. She doesn't ask where he got it, or why he always has it. Maybe she thinks it's just the same reason she has for carrying what she carries. It's something special, he can tell as it's happening, for him to be sharing this with somebody this way, a stranger.

She goes into her other pocket this time and pulls out something small, wooden, painted. "This is my favorite," she says. He gets a look at it as she holds it forward. It's a top, painted with stripes of red, purple, yellow, orange... It's small, rounded, like a raindrop. "My father gave it to me."

And it doesn't even hit him until she smiles at him and spins it.

And then it's a momentary  _eternity_ as he registers it all in full, the little girl here so familiar that the strangeness of it all didn't even occur to him. The top bumps, and skirts, and topples over, and Arthur remembers to breathe again. He turns quickly, even as calm is settling over him again, to roll his die on his other side.

Four. Well, he's awake.

He feels oddly like he might be at a crossroads, but he can't quite put his finger on what other option there is besides to sit back, pocket his die, and ask her, "When?"

She picks the top up and puts it back into her pocket. "Last year. My eighth birthday. It was his when he was little. I found it in a drawer and kept on taking it, so on my birthday he finally said it was mine to keep."

"So you're nine?" he asks.

She nods happily. "I  _just_ turned nine. That's why we're in London!"

Arthur raises his eyebrows in surprise. "A trip to London is  _quite_ the birthday gift."

"Well," she concedes, "we were going to go on a trip  _anyway_ , so I got to pick where."

He smiles. "I think you made a great choice," he says in earnest.

"Thank you," she says, quite proud of herself, wrinkling her nose, and in that moment it's undeniable even if it's completely impossible; she just  _is_ Mal.

His phone buzzes on the floor, screen illuminating with a notification, a text from Eames. The sight grounds him a little.

"Who's Eames?" she asks, reading the screen.

He picks his phone up. " _Nosy_ ," he says to her. She giggles. He's typing out a response to Eames when he hears a deep, kind French voice calling from the other end of the gallery.

" _Camille_ ," it's calling.

"Oui, papa," she calls back. "I guess I have to go," she says to him, closing the wallet he didn't realize she opened and handing it back to him. "Au revoir, Arthur."

He smiles wide at her, thinking he might hear the echo of her words for the rest of his life, and hoping desperately that he's right. He feels like his die is burning in his pocket, and suddenly he's fighting the unbelievable urge he has to give it to her, to let her carry it among her things. He knows he can't, or shouldn't, or won't. So he just says, "Bon anniversaire, Camille."

And he collects some of her things for her so she can stand, load her pockets again, and suddenly she's off, ridiculous boots clomping down the gallery, echoing.

He sits for a few moments in the deserted hall of minerals, letting himself feel the oddness of her presence, and then her absence, before getting up and turning the opposite way down the small remainder of the gallery, out to a staircase, and heads down.

Eventually, he finds Eames in a shop that is less "just a little ways back," and more "just past the main entrance of the museum." Arthur sees him browsing near the back, and is about to go to meet him when his eye is drawn to a few brass rings nearby. They feature carved dinosaur skulls. This place really doesn't skimp on the dinosaurs, Arthur notes, looking around.

He picks out the tyrannosaurus rex. He wonders what he even plans to do with it when he looks back, through the entrance of the shop, and sees her there with her family, lingering in the enormous entrance hall, taking in a last look. Camille catches Arthur's eye and wanders into the shop to meet him. Her parents seem to notice and allow the retreat, as though experience has proved this an unavoidable occurrence.

He steps up to the register and makes the purchase, refusing the clerk's offer for a bag. He turns to Camille, now standing next to him, and kneels down. "What do you think?" he asks her, holding the ring out for her to see.

She stares at it appraisingly. "It's wonderful," she decides. "I like it."

He hands it out to her, but she doesn't take it. Instead, she reaches back into her pocket, digging with an expression of great concentration, tongue poked out, eyebrows furrowed, until she pulls out the largest button, the red one. Arthur cracks a smile. "For me?" he asks.

"Yours," she says simply. He nods gratefully and they make the trade.

"Camille," a woman calls from the entrance, American as far as Arthur can tell. "It's time, my love." Camille skips to the shop's entrance to meet her mother, who gives Arthur a smile, sort of apologetic and appreciative,  _knowing_. Arthur's sure that wherever her parents take her, Camille forges friendships strong enough to result in such exchanges of goods.

Arthur sees Camille put the ring away into her pocket—her  _right_ pocket, he notes—the one presumably empty but for the wooden top. He feels a surge of pride, of gratitude; he feels very nearly  _blessed_ to have lived this day. As she and her mother turn to leave, Camille smiles wide, waving to Arthur, and Arthur returns both in full.

He feels a hand on his shoulder. "Darling," Eames' voice purrs from behind him. "You made a friend," he exclaims, pleased as anything.

Arthur nods before even turning back around, watching the last trace of the wild brown hair, the blue dress, the red boots disappear into the crowd moving toward the exit. "I did," he says, finally turning to face Eames.

Eames, whose arms are  _full_ of museum merchandise. At least five packages of freeze-dried "astronaut" ice cream, stuffed dinosaurs (presumably for James and Philippa), the insufferable T-rex's head grabber toy ( _without question_  for Eames), and a mass of printed fabric.

"It turns out, Arthur, that there's a particular line of dinosaur clothing here that just can't be ignored," Eames explains, dumping his bounty on the counter before the cashier. Arthur watches as the poor guy disentangles a pair of men's sweatpants, some socks, a sweatshirt,  _and_ a sweater, each printed  _all over_ with pictures of different dinosaurs or dinosaur skeletons.

Arthur spares a minute to take in the display. He then asks sardonically, "What, this is all you could find?"

Eames laughs. "Don't get cheeky, now. True, the children's pajamas just won't fit, but there  _are_ still yoga pants."

Arthur concedes as the clerk bags the items. "I appreciate you making that sacrifice," he assures Eames.

"Bloody hell," Eames huffs softly. "Is  _this_ what you bought that little girl?" he asks, looking down at the brass rings. Arthur nods. " _Fifty_ pounds?"

Arthur laughs, and his ears might redden a little now that he actually thinks about the price he paid for the ring. "Guess so," he replies, as Eames thanks the clerk and they make their way out of the store.

"Not to give you the impression that I'm not incredibly pleased at your generosity, but  _really?_ Poor girl's probably going to lose it on her way home."

Arthur takes Eames' hand as they walk out into the foyer and head for the doors. "No," he tells Eames, with certainty. "She won't."

And he doesn't tell him anything more. He keeps the rest to himself, mostly to see if there are things he can really keep all to himself anymore, in this life of shared everything, with his heart so spread-open like it never used to be. Sometimes bearing it alone, the  _reality_ of that day, is hard. Sometimes it's nearly impossible to believe. But there are always two reminders, sure as anything, that it wasn't a dream, and they're sitting in his pocket; the loaded die, and the red button.


End file.
